


I Was Looking At His Hand

by basketcasewrites



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Background Anne/Dan - Freeform, Domestic Fluff, Other, Post-Canon, they/them Venom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 05:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17156087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basketcasewrites/pseuds/basketcasewrites
Summary: His hair is littered with strands of grey, but they still remember a time when it was not.A time when his hair was a sharp-soft chestnut and he never silently wondered about its loss. Wondered and worried, despite Venom's best efforts at reassurance.





	I Was Looking At His Hand

**Author's Note:**

> title from the poem by Richard Siken:  
> he was pointing at the moon but I was looking at his hand
> 
> for my friend from the venom discord for the following prompts:  
> Venom and Eddie being funny, like Venom says smth dumb like "LETS HIT THE CLAIRES EDDIE WE'LL STEAL EVERYTHING" and eddie's like "SHUT UP ITS 3" & Venom giving eddie a really big hug & honestly just anything either super cute between them or just funny, whatever you're comfortable WITH PLEASE GO HAM
> 
> enjoy ♡

His hair is littered with strands of grey, but they still remember a time when it was not.

A time when his hair was a sharp-soft chestnut and he never silently wondered about its loss. Wondered and worried, despite Venom's best efforts at reassurance.   
  
**Getting old, Eddie.**

They curl up into the space between his body and the arm of the couch— revel in the heat he gives off, in the comforting warmth of him— their words a quiet utterance, their gaze imploring.   
  
A small smile dances on Eddie's lips, creases the corners of his eyes into a dozen tiny folds. "You keep me young, sweetheart," he says softly.

 

✴️ 

 

Anne's face is a map of wrinkles and beautiful creases now— they don't know from when it began. It tells the stories that her newly creaking bones accentuate; it matches Dan's own.   
  
She and Dan will move to Sweden in the first week of February.    
Their hands will know stark winters and cold-burning air, their hair will salt with the falling snow, their knuckles will wither with the weather.   
  
And Eddie will be here, greying and greying and greying and never aging.    
  
**What are you thinking about?** Venom questions gently.    
  
They have lost their sharp edges— those bitter shards of shrapnel that was their armour, those blades of glass that encased them— but they have never lost the gruffness of their voice.    
  
For a time— a painful time— they had tried.   
  
"I wouldn't know who you were if you were any different," on a rainy afternoon a lifetime ago, Eddie had kissed Venom and said. "Please. My love. Never force yourself to be any different."   
  
Now, in this room that is too large and too small, in this bed that should easily fit three people where it simply fits the two of them, Eddie clears his throat.

It is a harsh sound in the barely broken quiet.

“Just thinking.” His jaw tightens, the muscles in his neck contract as he swallows, and he repeats, “Just thinking.”

  
Early moonlight dances across the clothes-covered hardwood floor to reach the side of Eddie's face; to wash in soft planes over the curve of his bearded jaw.

The muted light highlights the fading bruise under his left eye, settles over the little thinking frown he wears.   
  
“We should leave,” Eddie answers. His whisper and the light through the uncovered window: they are one and the same. He lets his eyes slip shut for the length of a breath. “We should leave. Right now. Tomorrow. Yesterday.”    
  
**Why?**   
  
Eddie shifts so he is laying on his side, battle-scarred hand held between his head and his worn pillow.

“Everybody's getting old and moving on…” he pauses. In that pause— that painful beat of a second— Venom can feel Eddie's every thought. In that pause, the weight of Eddie's melancholy is enough to crash over and drown them both. “Everybody is… ” he sighs the sentence to completion. “And we're her— We're Static.”    
  
Venom matches to his movements. Pulling their amorphous form to curl in the space in front of Eddie, they feint a hesitant shrug.    
  
**I have you,** they say, uncertainty making their words slow.  **That has always been enough for me.**   
  
“And it will always be enough for me.” An exhausted murmur. Tinged with truth, with something else.    
  
_ Maybe Eddie is lying _ , they chase away the thought as soon as it flashes through their mind.  _ Maybe he does not even know that he is.  _   
  
Venom does not have the words to ask. Is not equipped with the right questions and enough answers to reassure themself.

So they do what they know best: they lose themself entirely in Eddie; they make him feel safe, they make him feel loved. They choke back frustration and try to fill in the empty spaces of his soul until every spare inch is overflowing with Venom, with Venom's love.

They slip over Eddie's body. Envelope him from his head to the tips of his toes, and hold him in their tight and familiar cocoon.

Sleep takes Eddie easily. In the security of Venom's hug, it takes him soon.    
  


✴️

  
Clouds drift across the moon, full and shining through the thinly veiled window, in half-mimicked patterns of Eddie's even breathing.

And Venom dares to wish to reach it, the sky outside their humble apartment's just as humble window. 

The clock ticks in the background. Sings its steady countdown to the next morning, to the next breathtaking sunrise.    
Venom watches the world outside the window— the stray bat flying into a cluster of three trees meets their eyes for a brief second before disappearing; the car hooting at the intersection unsettles the birds sleeping on the squat building opposite, leaves them loud and squawking; the lights rise and fall as Venom rises with each of Eddie's intakes of breath, as they fall with each of his exhales.    
  
Staring out the window, their tired lover in their fluid hold, their mind wanders.    


_ We're Static,  _ Eddie had said. Tired, on the edge of emptiness and exhaustion.

The words are just as cutting and discomforting now, these hours later. They run through Venom, over and over in little circles.

_ Everybody— Everybody— Everybody.  _ Always so concerned with everybody else. 

Venom has tried hard to, but they cannot understand.

**Eddie—** They tug at the strands of dirty brown hair, long and falling in tangles over his eyes.  **Eddie,** they call again, louder and pulling at the worn T-shirt Eddie refuses to throw away.

“What?  _ What _ ?” Eddie swats at the air without any direction. His eyes still firmly closed, he clings to sleep.

**I know,** they say.

Artfully and easily dodging Eddie's hand, they nip at his bare forearm, at the tip of his nose that is crooked from too many fights— some won; most lost.

Eddie forces his eyes open then. 

In the barely lit room, he squints up at Venom leaning over him. “Know what?” brow gathered in a confused furrow, Eddie asks.

**You want to not be static, Eddie?** Venom broaches, certain they already have the answer.

“I want to have  _ one  _ full night of sleep first,” Eddie gripes, voice a raspy mess. Burying his face into his pillow, his admonishing “Just  _ one night _ , Ven” is just barely heard.

They pull away at the sheets until they are a bundle haphazardly thrown on the floor, and Eddie is completely stripped of them.

**I know how to make you happy.**

He furrows his brow and looks at Venom. Confused, and unsure whether it is confusion born of misunderstanding or of being barely awake; cold and losing the tendrils of sleep he had been desperately clinging to.

Venom's words play in his sleep-seeped mind. When they finally register, it dawns on his face just as the realization does.

“ _ That… _ That was nothing…” He clears his throat, shakes his head adamantly. “I  _ am _ happy. With  _ you _ . With  _ us _ . Darling, don't ever doubt that.”

Venom bobs their head in a slow nod.

They take in every of Eddie's words. Sink into them, and choose to remember the roll of each letter in Eddie's mouth, of the clarity in his depthless eyes as he speaks, of the absolute certainty; remember, and keep for later.

They take in every of Eddie's words. Say,  **Then do it for me.**

 

✴️

 

His breath is a curtain of fine mist, blowing briefly past Venom's face before mingling with the rest of the cold air.

Salt and pepper hair, salt and pepper beard. They heal Eddie and, because of them, he barely ages.

Salt and pepper hair, salt and pepper beard, sweet wrinkles lining his mouth and eyes. He barely ages, but Venom grants themself some allowances. Some perks.

“So,” Eddie asks, hands buried in his faux-fur lined pockets, “Where to? Where is this secret to our eternal happiness?”

The sarcasm in his voice is heavy. Flattens out his words and pulls dryly at them.

Venom ignores it.

Instead, wrapped around Eddie's shoulders, they jerk his body forward and urge him to go where he is lead.

Only mildly complaining as he stumbles over a crack in the sidewalk, Eddie does.

His body shivers in the Winter-cold. It chills him, blooms in frosted flowers in his cage of crackling ribs.

**Keep you warm,** Venom utters loud enough for only Eddie's ears. It is barely spoken before they slip under the collar of Eddie's thin cotton shirt, crawl the length of his body to line the legs of his heavy jeans.  **Better?**

“Thank you, angel… Now. Tell me what we're doing exactly.”

**We're taking a self care day,** they say, tiny head popping from the rounded collar of his shirt and casting a beaming grin over Eddie.  **Like the ones Anne takes. You know, like the ones you promised me you'd start to take.**

“Sleeping is self care.”

**_Sleeping is self care._ ** **You dickhead, it isn't the same,** they mock.  **Let's hit up** **_Claire's_ ** **. It's a lawless time, we can steal everything.**

“What? No!” Eddie exclaims. He stops mid-stride, fond weariness written all over his face. “Firstly,” he begins, “nobody starts a  _ self-care day  _ by going to  _ Claire's _ . Secondly, V, it's three in the fucking morning.”

**We know.** They tug at Eddie again, refuse to let him halt.  **But we like** **_Claire's_ ** **, Eddie. Their stuff makes us feel pretty.**

“You're pretty anyways.” Eddie swallows a laugh and settles for a smile, one that pushes his face into the series of sweet wrinkles Venom loves. “But, listen to me, it's closed.”

**It stays open 24/7.**

“Okay—  _ How— _ ” Eddie says on the end of another, unbidden, laugh. “ _ Why  _ do you know so much about  _ Claire's? _ ”

They pop back under Eddie's shirt, fit themself to the hard lines of his body.

Their hollow growl— something like the sound of an irritated eye-roll Eddie can't see— sends shaky vibrations down the length of Eddie's body.  **Were you just… not listening?** A sigh.

The streets are far from deserted.

People surround them; fill the sidewalks with their rounded shoulders hidden under layers of coats, with their bowed heads and rushing legs.

They are ever-moving; ever battling the cars in leaving and returning.

And when Eddie let's out a laugh— a gorgeous thing that reminds Venom of stepping on sun-warm pebbles, of running tendrils of ink through coarse beachsand and finding pieces of seaglass— more than one passing head turns to swivel, to stare.

“I was,” Eddie answers. Artfully and easily ignoring the eyes on him, he weaves past a speeding bicyclist and crosses the road. “You know everything they have is for, like, little kids and teenagers, right?”

**Don't be an asshole, Eddie. I could make fun of you about so many things, but I don't. Because I love you.**

“Hey.”

He raises a loose fist to the curve of his neck, to the spot where the sparse scruff of his beard meets skin. Patiently, he waits for Venom to meet the bend of his knuckles with a bump of their tiny formless head.

“I love you, too.”

**I know,** they say, words as soft as the kiss they plant on the underside of Eddie's chin. Already forgiven.

“But  _ Claire's _ …  _ Really? _ ”

**_Asshole._ **

 

✴️

 

They walk almost aimlessly from street to street, from storefront to storefront.

For every inch of Eddie Venom has, they want more and more.

They leak tendrils of themself from the sleeve of Eddie's jacket, down the back of a scraped-scratched hand.

_ How to hold the hand of your husband, when you and your husband are one and the same? _

_ When you inhabit the very body to which you want to show the most mundane affection? _

Silken strands of Venom find a home in the spaces between Eddie's fingers; find a home over his bruised knuckles, around his age-aching wrist.

“Sir,” the girl at a corner kiosk says slowly. Her sunken eyes are smudged with the purple and black of the sleepless, it seeps into her skin and makes her look ages older. “There's, uh, motor oil?”

“Oh, that?” Eddie shrugs, picking up the piping polystyrene cup of coffee. “That's my. That's my husband.”

 

✴️

 

“I can't believe you actually made me  _ buy _ those for you,” Eddie complains, letting the apartment door close behind him with a gentle  _ click. _

**I didn't tell you to** **_buy_ ** **them.**

“I'm too old for minor larceny.”

Shrugging out of his jacket, Eddie gives it a solid series of shakes for the gathered flakes of snow to fall to the square of floor in front of the door.

**Hey!** Venom calls, voice raised in a mix of shock and muted anger. They drop from the jacket to the floor, from the close comfort of the pocket they had settled into on the walk back home _.  _ **How about some warning next time?**

Eddie narrows his eyes as he seems to think about it. “No.”

They imagine they are an odd sight. An obsidian figure, as menacing as Venom knows they look, forming a melted puddle in the middle of the room and clutching an armful of holographic bows to their chest.

**Be nice to me.**

“No,” Eddie repeats. He walks further into the apartment, adds his damps sneakers and jeans to the rest of the clothes strewn across the rooms. “You've gotta wear those everywhere now.”

Venom makes  **_tch_ ** sound.  **I chose them for a reason.**

Slithering behind Eddie they beat him to the bedroom. Move to sit atop the bed.

They hold up the fuschia Alice band with the biggest bow.  **This one's my favourite,** Venom says.

“ _ Hm, _ ” Eddie hums under his breath, pulling his shirt over his head and messing his hair into greater tangles. “Very nice, V,” he says around a sudden yawn.

**Or maybe this one…** they murmur, critically eyeing a yellow band with a slightly smaller, polka dotted bow.  **What do you think?**

Hunched over and rifling through his drawers for a pair of sweatpants to sleep him, Eddie raises his head in a quick nod.

The glance he throws over his shoulder is brief, only slightly acknowledging. “Very cute, V,” he answers.

His voice is a near monotone, but the smile he casts at Venom is wholehearted and as fond as his fleeting gaze.

And that is enough for Venom to fill with warmth.

That is enough for Venom to know that  _ everybody— everybody— everybody else  _ doesn't matter as much to Eddie as they do.

That is enough to quiet the riot that has been tearing them apart since the night began.

Eddie steps into the sweatpants he grabbed— an old, ratty pair that Venom is sure Eddie has had for longer than he has been an adult.

He stops at the end of the bed.

And, for a moment, all he does is stand there.

There is a soft light in his eyes, a small smile on his lips. His expression as he watches Venom fawn over the accessories they had bought— _not_ _stole_ , despite Venom's wheedling insistence it would be more fun— is almost unreadable.

Distracted, the run of Eddie's gently cupped hand petting at Venom's head as if they are a simple cat is a short surprise.

Eddie bends and, hand held without pressure to cup Venom's chin, he places a delicate kiss to the shapeless curve of their forehead.

“I'm serious, okay?” he says, voice a hush, “They're ridiculous, but you like them. And they  _ do _ kinda suit you.”

 

✴️

 

His hair is a sea of salt and pepper, with slightly more flecks of salt then there is pepper.

His hair is littered with strands of grey. But they still remember a time when it was not.

The bed is too big for just the two of them. But these many many  _ many _ years of use have worn it in all the right places, and it forms to the shape of Eddie's bruised-bent body without difficulty.

The apartment is too big for just the two of them, a man and a symbiote. But there is the floorboard the children scrappily carved their names into, and the kitchen where they kiss every morning, and the window where they cuddle close to watch the fireworks on each New Year's Eve.

Maybe tomorrow they will leave San Franciso.

Maybe the day after that they will leave the States entirely.

Maybe, Venom thinks, they would like to travel to Anne, to the home she and Dan have built for themselves in a country of cold. 

To watch Eddie match them new wrinkle for new wrinkle, creaking knuckle for creaking knuckle, whiskey laugh for whiskey laugh. 

To watch him become as impervious to the snow, to the bone-deep ice of Winter.

Maybe they will do what Eddie wishes and be less static _. _

Maybe.

For now they are an anchor. For now they are a pair resting in the middle of an ever changing ocean. Content, despite everything; content  _ in spite _ of everything.

“Maybe,” Eddie utters, the word a whisper brushed from his lips and lost into the breaking sky like a wish. Like a bare prophecy, a promise.

**Wherever you go,** Venom murmurs, incomplete but understood,  **If we're together.**

A flurry of birds fly past their window, greet the coming morning with their music that is a melodious cacophony.

Eddie nods. Reaching across the miniscule space for Venom, he threads his fingers through their midnight cloak. “I know, V,” he says. “I know.”

Light breaks through the dull purple and dust sky, through the gathering of foreboding rainclouds.

Ray after ray of sunlight chases away remnants of the night.

And curled up in this too large bed together— so tangled there is no point where one begins and one ends; so tangled that even the  _ idea  _ of separation is ludicrous— they watch the tropic firestorm that is the sunrise.

“It's just…  _ gorgeous _ ,” Eddie sighs. His smile crooked as delicate orange-yellow-pink streaks across their floor.

**You are, Eddie.** Hushed.

Eddie is bathed in the colours of the sunrise, in these soft shades of fire he loves so much.

Why would Venom look anywhere else— want for anything else— when they have the sun and the earth, the moon and the stars?

When they have everything?

Eddie's eyes slip shut for just a second. Soon, as they do each night, Venom will curl around him and he will fall back into his disrupted sleep.

“Hey, V?” he speaks, a smile on his face and in his voice. ”I meant it, you know, what I said. You will always be enough for me.  _ We  _ will always be enough for me.”

No hesitation.  **I know.**

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to see how I procrastinate, shoot me some asks or just hang out, you can find me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/dykemilesmorales)


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